May 1, 2008
In Katonah-Lewisboro School District
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'Out of control' bullying in district
It happens every day in our schools — a student gets teased, or pushed, or held, or otherwise mistreated by another student. Sometimes it escalates into a constant stream of abuse. And then it becomes bullying — a serious issue, not just in the Katonah-Lewisboro School District, but around the country.
“This isn’t simply kids being kids,” said community member and parent John Socolow. “This is good old-fashioned malice, and it’s completely unnecessary. The things they’re doing, if they were 16, they’d be in jail. But because they’re not, it’s basically giving them a free pass.”
“Bullying is out of control,” Sgt. Frank Secret, the Lewisboro Police Department’s youth officer, told The Ledger. “The amount of time I’m spending on it is unbelievable.”
When the bullying stays within the schools, the schools themselves can do something about it. Students can be punished with detentions and suspensions, and the school can talk to the students’ parents.
“I feel like the school has done what they can for the stuff that takes place on school grounds,” said Marian Vitale, a parent of a student. “But the biggest frustration is once they’re not on school grounds and out of school jurisdiction, it appears that the police really can’t do anything until there’s some physical, visible form of injury.”
According to Sgt. Secret, outside the schools, there is less that can be done.
“It’s very frustrating on my part,” said Sgt. Secret. “My hands are very tied. I must follow the letter of the law.”
And the letter of the law says most of the activities that are generally considered bullying — teasing, pushing, grabbing — qualify as harassment, a violation. Until they turn 16, children may not be charged with violations. While some activities might seem like assault, Sgt. Secret said the abuse has to escalate significantly — so that there’s a certain measure of physical injury — before the police are allowed to charge anyone with assault.
Sgt. Secret said the law would need to be changed before he could start taking any action.
“If any good can come out of this, maybe we can write things to the politicians,” he said. “Those are the people that can change the law or make things different.”
All this has come together to cause some parents in the community to start to fight back.
“You can’t do anything individually,” said Denise Simon of South Salem, who has been attempting to raise awareness about bullying in the schools. “I, as a whole, cannot do something — we, as a community, can do something. It’s the kids we have to educate — you have to reach them in their heart, and it’s such an emotional place.”
According to clinical psychologist Dr. Joel Haber, author of Bullyproof Your Child for Life, working as a community to protect the victims of the bullying might be an effective tool against it.
“There’s power in numbers. If the kids who are not doing the bullying got together and really talked about a neighborhood watch,” then the bullies would not be able to pick out one specific child to target, and there would be a group of children reporting the bullies, rather than one child who could be picked on. “It has to be done in a way so as not to expose any one particular kid for sharing information,” Dr. Haber said.
Dr. Haber also talked to The Ledger about how to teach students to deal with bullies.
“It’s all about power imbalance,” he said. “Generally, it’s going to be over if the kid equalizes the power.” Many children and teens already have an innate skill set of techniques to brush off bullying and to make themselves uneasy targets, but about 10% need help to supplement their own skills, according to Dr. Haber. It’s these children, the targets of bullies, who need to be taught ways to brush aside a bully’s taunts or to give as good as they get, and not to give the response the bully is looking for.
“The kids who get picked on are the kids that get the biggest reaction,” Dr. Haber said. “If we can teach kids how to fend off this, we’re teaching them a good life skill.”
Fighting the problem
In order to educate children about the effects of bullying, Ms. Simon has pushed forward efforts to have the middle school show a video called Hero in the Hallway, which attempts to highlight the effects of bullying for students. The video is available on YouTube here.
“Kids have to watch drunk driving videos,” said Ms. Simon. “The same thing needs to happen here. Let them show the video of what happens when you’re bullied.”
The video was shown during homebase at the middle school during No Name-Calling Week, one of the school’s anti-bullying programs, this year.
“The kids were really stunned by it — it’s a really powerful video,” said middle school social worker Jessica Fulton. “It shows that exclusion and stereotyping happen everywhere. The only way that it’s going to stop is if we admit that it happens, and we take a stand and we turn to our neighbor and don’t let it happen.”
And the schools and police have been trying to fight the problem. In addition to No Name-Calling Week, John Jay Middle School has run “Mix It Up Day,” where students were asked to sit at lunch with groups based on their birthday month, rather than their usual social groups. There are regular activities during homebase aimed at reducing bullying, according to Ms. Fulton, and a recent talk at the schools by Dr. Haber was attended by about 80 parents.
This past year, the DARE program, developed by a national nonprofit organization and run by Sgt. Secret at John Jay Middle School, added a section on bullying to its curriculum. And last Friday, Sgt. Secret attended a gathering of youth officers from around the area to talk about the problem of bullying.
“Everybody’s just as frustrated as I am right now,” he said. “We recognize that there’s a big problem out there — it’s almost an epidemic. And we don’t know why.”
Parental responsibility?
One issue that many parents of bullied children face is how to deal with the parents of the bullies. In some cases, it can seem like the parents are in denial, or don’t believe there’s a problem, or actively encourage bullying. Often, the complaints are leveled against the same bullies over and over.
“How do you stop a bully from bullying?” asked Ms. Simon. “I would think the parents would need to be a little bit responsible here.”
But Dr. Haber said that confronting the parents about a bully can be self-defeating, especially if the bully finds out who complained.
“Unless you know the parent really well, I would never recommend that you talk to the parent directly,” he said. “It’s best to go to the school directly, let them know the situation and let them handle it. You don’t want to put your kid at more risk.”
If parents do discover that their child has been bullying other children, it can be difficult to confront them about the behavior.
“You have to really first talk to your kid about their behavior,” Dr. Haber said. “You want to get kids to reflect on their behavior. Kids that bully are not using their empathy — they see those kids as an opportunity for their own gain.”
He suggested that parents try to brainstorm with their children about ways to apologize for an incident or make the situation right, in addition to punishments.
“Punishment is helpful, but it’s not necessarily replacing the behavior,” he said. “You need to engage their empathy, rather than just using punishment.”
More information about “bullyproofing” children may be found at Dr. Haber’s Web site, respectu.com.
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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